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Background The extent to which education explains variations in sex differences in cognitive function between countries at different levels of economic development is unknown. We examined the role of education in sex differences in four cognitive domains in high- and middle-income countries. Methods Analyses were based on 70,846 participants, aged 60 years and older, in cohort studies from a high-income (United States) and four middle-income countries (Mexico, Brazil, China, and India). We used weighted linear models to allow nationally-representative comparisons of sex differences in orientation, memory, attention, and fluency using the United States as the reference, before and after adjustment for education, and after stratification by education. Results Females had lower levels of education than males in all countries, particularly in India. Before adjustment for education, sex differences in orientation and attention in all middle-income countries, memory in Brazil, China, and India, and fluency in India were less favourable to females than in the United States (P  < 0.010). For example, females outperformed males in memory in the United States (mean difference [male–female scores] = −0.26 standard deviations [95% CI −0.30, −0.22]) but not in China (0.15 [0.09, 0.21]) or India (0.16 [0.13, 0.19]). Adjustment for education attenuated these sex differences. In analyses stratified by education, there were minimal sex differences in the high education group in all countries. Conclusion Education contributes to larger female disadvantages in cognitive function at older ages in middle-income countries compared with the United States. Gender equity in education is an important target to reduce sex disparities in cognitive function globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of China has brought about new considerations and a debate in East Asian security studies. Several of the countries neighbouring China have been probed for their degree of 'Finlandization', as manifest in excessive attentiveness to the interests of a neighbouring great power, due to the power asymmetry between the 'Finlandized' and the 'Finlandizer'. This article will scrutinize Finlandization and determine to what extent the power relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union can be compared with the emerging power relationship that China's East Asian neighbours will have to tackle. Furthermore, this article will seek from the Finnish experience lessons for East Asia on how to adapt to power realities without making the mistakes that Finland and the Soviet Union made in their relationship. China's East Asian neighbours could learn how to avoid compromising their autonomy from Finland's mistakes. They could also learn from Finnish realism how to tackle the security dilemma that the rise of Chinese power involves, and how to seek security in a way that would not make the rising great power feel any less secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent Anglo-American scholarship suggests that China’s soft power strategy has failed the country. Chinese culture and values have not gained their expected appeal, and China has failed to create an alliance structure similar to that of the United States in support of its leadership. This article suggests a reinterpretation of the evidence by means of recontextualising the concepts of soft power and global governance in the context of China’s undertaking of a peaceful ascension. China’s approach to, and objectives in world affairs are different from those of the United States, and therefore China’s soft power strategy cannot be evaluated using an American yardstick. If analysed according to China’s specific objectives and the world in which China lives, one can see that China’s soft power serves the country relatively well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations of CO2 and CH4, due to human activities, is the main driver of the observed increase in surface temperature by more than 1 °C since the pre-industrial era. At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris, most nations agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the increase in global surface temperature to 1.5 °C. Satellite remote sensing of CO2 and CH4 is now well established thanks to missions such as NASA's OCO-2 and the Japanese GOSAT missions, which have allowed us to build a long-term record of atmospheric GHG concentrations from space. They also give us a first glimpse into CO2 and CH4 enhancements related to anthropogenic emission, which helps to pave the way towards the future missions aimed at a Monitoring & Verification Support (MVS) capacity for the global stock take of the Paris agreement. China plays an important role for the global carbon budget as the largest source of anthropogenic carbon emissions but also as a region of increased carbon sequestration as a result of several reforestation projects. Over the last 10 years, a series of projects on mitigation of carbon emission has been started in China, including the development of the first Chinese greenhouse gas monitoring satellite mission, TanSat, which was successfully launched on 22 December 2016. Here, we summarise the results of a collaborative project between European and Chinese teams under the framework of the Dragon-4 programme of ESA and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to characterize and evaluate the datasets from the TanSat mission by retrieval intercomparisons and ground-based validation and to apply model comparisons and surface flux inversion methods to TanSat and other CO2 missions, with a focus on China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]